I find the hardest issue with trains is getting to the smaller side destinations. I guess you're still gonna need a small car or bike for that of course. Plus I'm used to semi rural so I'd still have to drive a few miles to even get on the train to go somewhere. And it wouldnt make any sense for going to a friends house for example.

No idea how it works really. Plus I'm almost always hauling gear to a destination so a train wouldnt work for me anyway. Going to get groceries is about the only thing I'd use it for and I wouldnt be able to carry an entire cartload.

BigOil would like to have a word.

More like three and a half hours if you want an actually usefull line that stops.at places where people wanna stop at and you add the time needed to accelerate and decelerate but yeah. Also thats calculating with 500kmh which is very much cutting edge and constructing a line like that takes decades BUT that doesnt mean such investments arent worth it and also just fixing transport within a city is already worth it.

Imagine how this would disempower landlords if you could commute to either of those cities from anywhere between them.

Car dependency is about power, it's about keeping workers vulnerable and reliant on constant employment to participate in society. The one thing the US and Canada has over other imperial powers is the obscene amount of space each state has at its disposal within the metropole with which to construct what really is an exceptional form of oppression. It's important to recognize that when you're talking about ending car dependency, this is an existential threat to either power, and they will treat it in kind.

There is convenience in the ineptitude of neoliberal politics in state-planning and infrastructure, which most people attribute as the cause of this development, but it's crucial to remember that suburban sprawl and car dependency were state projects by the US and Canada in very much they same way neoliberal privatization is.

Many reasons, all of them stupid and/or depressing.

Many are downstream from racism.

Americans couldn't realize that having a child rapist as their head of state was a bad thing.

Well… you must remember, they are Ameicans, trains are COMMUNISM!

Wow. Now that's something I would very much want my tax money go to, any day at any country

Other than the NIMBY-ism, lawyers all looking to make a shitload of money off the taxpayer by looking for reasons to delay the project, and the anti-mass transit attitude the US has…just look at the California high speed rail project mired in legal grifting for instance.

There’s generic American “we fuck up nice things becuase fuck the rules” attitudes. You can have nice high-speed rail in places like Europe or Japan, or high speed driving on segments of the Autobahn, because society has enough sense to not fuck it up. They’re not parking tractor trailers or cars on rail intersections causing crashes on rail like we have all the time in the US. People generally obey rules like keeping right unless passing, or not blocking the passing lane in Europe. In several shopping areas and airports they have people movers without steps that are ramps betwen floors. In the US it would be a very short period between the installation and some fool riding a skateboard or bike down the ramp and hurting themselves or other people - then come the lawsuits. Someone would probably punch an idiot trying to do that in Europe.

So yeah. Even if we could muster the political balls to build such a needed rail, and get the money for it (because it would have to be profitable of course), some jackass would light the track on fire, park a car on it, or who knows what other dumbassery, because fuck nice things.

Meanwhile, Musk is at it again, pitching a hyperloop tunnel to link Austin and San Antonio. Nevermind that it’s a ton of limestone and aquifers along that route.

Fuck Maglev.

Regular ass trains on steel tracks can go >200mph if built to spec. Suuuure, maglev can go even faster. But regular ass trains on steel tracks can actually be build on a realistic budget. Like in theory atleast. But before the US does something this sane they're gonna nuke themselves. idk

There's no profit in building sensible infrastructure.

Only profit in endless wars against brown people